Playing or Not Playing your Last Bowl at Lawn Bowls

Last Bowl in the End

When your side has the last bowl there may be more risk playing into the head than potential benefit. The Laws of Bowls permit you to forgo that delivery and count the end as it stands.

However, at least when playing on outdoor greens which may not be perfectly flat, You should always use that last unnecessary bowl to explore some unused part of the green.

The most frequent situation will be when you have only knowledge of one side of the rink. For example, early in a match, you may have only bowled forehand. Given last bowl in a head you do not wish to change and where the best option incurs substantial risk to your advantage, you should experiment to learn the draw on the unfamiliar backhand side. Since you most definitely don’t want to disturb the head, you should bowl long if the end is a short one and vice versa.

Another possible way to use your extra bowl, is to target one edge of the rink. This will give you advanced knowledge of the amount of grass to take when the jack is displaced towards that boundary later in the contest. At the same time you will not be putting the present head situation in danger.

Last Bowl for your Side

When you have the penultimate bowl, you may still not want to risk disturbing the head even though you know your opposition skip will have one more try to change the outcome. Whether you need to bowl into the head depends upon how many other possible counting bowls you have. If your side has only a single bowl protecting against a large score by the opposition usually the best choice is to try to deliver another counter. This should be balanced by assessing how exposed your best bowl is to attack.

If after all these consideration, you still feel that you should not risk interfering with the head you can choose to:

Bowl to a respot position if you are playing ‘no dead ends’.

Place the ‘backest bowl’ on the side of the rink where a displaced jack is most likely to go.

On a slow green, place a 14 meter blocker  to protect against a draw or run through shot if only one side of the rink remains playable (one cannot place a 14 meter blocker on a fast green because the blocker would be on another rink)

On a fast green, place a blocker 2-3 meters short of the head on the centre line to protect against a drive (on a slow green it is difficult to protect against both forehand and backhand drives because both paths will entail curvature) 

In the situation where you do not wish to disturb the head but you need your last bowl to be ‘in the count’ you need to be increasingly aware that your bowl must finish behind the head but not be narrow.